~ Cute Turtle Bread from Jireh Bakery ~

The beautiful Elle from InsideOutElle blog kindly informed me that there's a nice little bakery by the spa I went to over the weekend.  So, I headed over there in search of the "turtle bread" she mentioned. 

The turtle bread is so cute!  This is how you are supposed to eat it...

There are 2 types of fillings:  cream cheese and blueberry cream cheese. I think the blueberry one is a little weird.  The bread itself is awesome, but I didn't care for the filling.

The regular cream cheese one is better.  I love cream cheese!!

After dinner, we went to check out the desserts and got this tiramisu cup.  It looks awesome!!!  It tastes nothing like tiramisu though.  And the chocolate cup is a little bit hard to eat.

There are plenty of other desserts though!  Probably will try the cheesecake next time.

 

I also got this loaf of corn and pumpkin bread.  It tastes like regular pound cake though.

I also got the chocolate (I think?) Mickey mouse bread and the strawberry cream cheese strawberry bread.  All very cute.  Really love the bread and the strawberry filling.  The chocolate is a little too sweet to me though.

All in all, it's a nice place.  They have binsoo too, but I didn't try that.  This place is easy to miss because it's kind of in its own building and there's a unit next to it that looks burnt out.  It has outdoor seating too, but I think it will look a lot nicer with some flowers.  It's a great place for desserts after dinner at Honey Pig :)  Thanks to Elle for introducing me to this place!

~ New Honey Pig at Centreville, VA ~

I briefly mentioned Honey Pig before, but really, this place deserves its own post.  Who doesn't like Honey Pig?  I used to go to the one in Annadale, but I found a new one!  It's right next to Spa World in Centerville.  What an awesome, relaxing day to go to spa, eat korean bbq at Honey Pig, grab some groceries at the Korean grocery store and have some desserts at Jireh's bakery across the street.... Anyway, here are some yummy pictures!  These are the side dishes....

This is the hangover soup.  What a funny name.  The meat is very tender and the soup is very flavorful.  To me, it tasted a little like lamb, but my friend says it's pork.

For 4 girls, we ordered 3 dishes... 2 pork bellies and 1 boneless beef.  I think the beef with bone is usually better though.  I love the pork bellies!  It's such a guilty pleasure.

At Honey Pig, the waitresses come by and cook for you.  They also give you some kim chi on the grill and lettuce and rice to go with the meat.  *drool*  So, 3 dishes and a soup was perfect for us 4 girls.  It's about $15/person so it was not bad at all.

As a side note, I saw live abalone at the grocery store next to honey pig!  I don't think I have ever seen live abalone in America before.  $6 each though!  I was tempted to get one just to see how it tastes.... but they look so creepy!

~ Muddy Hike at Billy Goat Trail ~

Yay!  It's finally time to hike!  It has been raining for a few days and I was worried that the trail would be muddy.  But, my awesome friend reassured me that it would not be muddy because he went last week and it was fine.  This is what my shoes and pants looked like after I came back.  Would you call this muddy?

 Just to be clear... this is what was on my shoes.....  I had some fun with my macro lens :D

Anyway, aside from the mud, it was a great hike!  It was a lil dangerous because part of the easier trail was flooded so we had to climb some crazy rocks.  I need to take a break from this Billy Goat Trail for a few weeks at least.  I m still a lil afraid of those rocks right now.  There were a lot of fallen trees and signs of flooding and I had to get down and use my hands at a few spots.  But, it felt really good to be out and about again. 

Of course, it's always more fun with the dogs!  It was a shiba inu party!  I was so jealous that they looked so clean compared to Momo!

Look at this rat.   He was not happy to be back on the leash after running around on his own for most of the trail.

Good thing I had a blanket in the car to save my seat!  He was so wet and nasty.  We had to shampoo him twice and just hose him down to get rid of all the dirt.   Well, at least he's nice and fluffy now.  Can't wait to go back!!

~ New Items and Spring Sale at Happy Cloud Moments ~

I have been super busy with work, visits, foster dogs and life that I haven't had a lot of time to make jewelry.  I finally got 1 free night and ended up making a multi-strand necklace and 2 pairs of earrings!  I usually don't make multi-strand necklaces because it looks hard.  It took a lot of time, but I did it!  I used a couple vintage Swarovski crystal daisies, flowers, butterflies and spring color beads and my favorite sterling silver heart chain.

After spending a few hours on that necklace, I put together 2 pairs of simple earrings because I finally restocked these awesome earwires!  I love this Bermuda Blue Heart crystals.  It's just so gorgeous!

These starfish earrings are perfect for summer time.  I can also make this out of other color starfish crystals.  In fact, I already sold a pair in indicolite.  I love it when something sells the day I list them!

Another announcement for Happy Cloud Moments is that I am having a Spring Sale!  Items are marked down by 20-75% off!  Here's a snapshot of the Spring Sale section.  Be sure to check it out!  And don't forget that there's a destash sale going on in Happy Cloud Supplies too!

~ NOTD: Lonely Eclipse and Nail Polish Haul ~

Did you guys see the Ulta $5 off $10 coupon? Sure beats the usual $3.5 off $10 coupon. And they are running a buy 2 get 1 free sale on nail polish too! So... even though I said I don't want to get more nail polish... I did.  Well, at least I got something that I needed, which is a base coat.  I also got a bright pink because all my pinks are very sheer or muted.  And I just had to get this Nicole by OPI in One Less Lonely Glitter.  It is part of a Justin Bieber collection.  I can't believe I got anything related to Justin Bieber but it's too pretty!  Anyway, with the coupon and the sale, I got these 3 for $11!  I am gonna go back and use the coupon on a new bottle of Seche Vite soon.  I am almost out!

So, I wanted to use One Less Lonely Glitter, but I wanted to layer it on top of a nice lilac color because it's pretty sheer.  But I only have plumish purples.  So, I mixed my own using Missha PP102 (it was $0.39) and Orly Lunar Eclipse.  I was just about to throw away Lunar Eclipse because I just don't like its consistency and the color is way more blue on my nails than in the bottle.  But it makes PP102 look so nice!!!  This is 10 drops of PP102 and 3 drops of Lunar Eclipse.

 

Here's the resulting color.  I put a layer of E.L.F. white nail polish the bottom so the color looks opague.  I love it!!!

So, this is what I used for my manicure today.  Haven't used this much on 1 finger ever!  There's the base coat, the white coat, the Lunar Eclipse mixed with Missha PP102, One Less Lonely Girl and my beloved Seche Vite top coat.  Crazy!!

But, it's so worth it!  I love how this turned out.  I must say that One Less Lonely Girl is an awesome glitter.  It's super super sparkly.  It has tiny glitter and medium size glitter.  I love it so much that I just stare at my nails whenever I can.  I am not sure I like this "Perfect Stroke" brush though.  It's so wide and it felt clumsy to me.

So, since I mixed the colors myself, I am going to name this combo "Lonely Eclipse".  I used to love mixing nail polish when I was in high school.  I used to do it in my room and spilled some on the carpet and got into trouble for it.  This is fun!  I should just get a bunch of cream colors from the Zoya promo and mix my own whenever I want!

~ Zoya Nail Polish Exchange ~

I really should not get any more nail polish. I have a few bottles that I haven't even opened! But, Zoya has a really awesome deal going on right now!  It's the Zoya Nail Polish Exchange!  Basically, you get the polish for $4 a bottle, shipped.  Plus, you can send back your old, non-zoya polishes and they will dispose of them for you in a environmentally-safe way!

Here's what I have in my cart right now.  Pippa is a must because I love yellow and I really need an opaque yellow polish.  I want a true purple and a light creamy blue.  I don't have any cream polishes because I am all about glitter.  But I think I want to try some.  Any suggestions?

~ More Spring Flowers with Nikon D90 ~

Finally a nice spring day!  I got home  little early from work yesterday and took Niki out for a spin.  Yes, I named my Nikon D90 Niki.  This is my neighbor's tuplip.  So pretty!  I didn't do any post processing to this picture :) 

These are nothing spectacular..... I love these Kwanza cherry blossoms , but I think they look better from far away.  Also, it was so hard to take a sharp picture!  There was a slight breeze so the branches were all moving and my hands were shaky!

Close up of these.... I still don't know what these are! 

Random branch with new leaf....

My multicolor pepper sprouts!  Can't wait for them to be full grown with peppers!!

So, I have no idea what I am doing with the camera still. I really need to spend some time to learn the functions and read up on aperture and shutter speed. Always so much to do!!!

~ Chedi Thai Bistro in La Jolla ~

One relaxing week night, we had a wonderful dinner at this small Thai restaurant called Chedi Thai Bistro in La Jolla.  I love the ambiance there, very colorful, but relaxing with it's waterfall displays, buddha statues and big bird cage lights.

First off, we ordered some Thai Ice Tea.  It was yummy!  Not as sweet as some other restaurants I have had. 

For appetizers, we had some shrimp pancake thingies.  These were good!  Love the sauces and the little fried lotus root on top.  The details are awesome!

We had curry, which was very flavorful and has a decent kick.  The portions were good too!

I think this was grilled pork chop.  I love grilled stuff and it was so good.  Tender and not too salty.

Drunken noodles was also good.  Very spicy!  I had just a little bit and I needed to cool my tongue with that Thai Ice tea.  My husband loved it though! 

If I live around this area, I would consider eating here every time I am too lazy to cook.  It's easy and relaxing and very good!

~ The Prado at Balboa Park ~

Just like the museum area in DC, San Diego has an area just for museums called Balboa Park which includes the famous San Diego Zoo. The museums are cool and the zoo is awesome, but the museums there are just not as cool as the museums we have in DC. So, I will only talk about the awesome lunch we had at Balboa Park at The Prado.

The decor is interesting.  Very bright and very fun!  It's filled with all these glass art work, but the chairs are strange.  They are too high for the tables and the booths are too low.  Very strange.

The food was great thought.  I love this complimentary pita bread thing.  It got me excited for the food.

We started with the appetizer which is an Asian style calamari with thai sweet chili sauce served over a tangy salad.  I love the sauce and the calamari is very lightly breaded with is awesome.

I had the Baby Greens salad.  It has "greens, pomegranate seeds, hazelnuts, midnight moon cheese, caramel cider vinaigrette".  I usually don't get fancy salads because some of the fancy stuff tastes weird.  But, I really like the name "midnight moon" cheese.  That just sounds magical.  And it was so good!  I loved the hazelnuts and the dressing!  The pomegranate adds a little bit of fresh tartness and the cheese added richness and saltiness to the greens.  

This is the roasted jidori half chicken with "mascarpone polenta, sauteed spinach, fennel confit, truffle pan sauce".  It looks similar to the jasmine lemon chicken from 8407 and it's just as tender.  It's not as tart because it doesn't have the lemon, but it was still very flavorful.

This is the 8oz kobe burger.  Very yummy.  Comes with grilled purple onions and taro chips!

It's nice to see something other than fries and these were very good!  Not as greasy and heavy as fries but has the good friedness that every one likes.

I loved everything here!  Price is reasonable I think.  The chicken dish is $18 which may seem high for lunch, but this is Balboa Park.  Everything is expensive, just like how it's $8 to get a hot dog in the Natural History Museum cafe in DC.  I would definitely come back to eat if I ever go to Balboa Park again.